Managing the user experience for incompatible VDI plugins in zoom
Frequently, the question is asked how to detect when a VDI plugin needs to be installed or updated and how to notify users that they need to install or update a VDI plugin to a compatible version and what options are available for detecting when a plugin is missing or too old.
Several registry entries are available in Zoom to enable you to configure the minimum version that must be installed, as well as what to display when that requirement is not met.
It is important to note that there are four different configuration options that you can choose from. If you are interested in learning more about additional VDI client registry settings, you can find more information online.
The four options covered in this article are:
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What you need to do if the VDI Zoom client has a different version from the VDI Plugin, and you want to show or disable a warning message.
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In the event that a VDI plugin is missing or is incompatible with the Virtual Desktop Interface, you will need to set the Fallback mode so that end users can still join meetings.
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This is the message that will appear to the end user when they attempt to join a meeting if a VDI plugin is either missing or incompatible (too old or greater than the desktop client version).
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If you were to optimize audio and video for a Zoom meeting using the VDI plugin for the VDI Zoom Meeting client, what is the minimum version that this client will accept?
Warning message for different version of VDI plugin and Zoom meeting client
When a user signs into Zoom Meeting from their VDI desktop in their virtual desktop, the Zoom Meeting client checks if that user has the VDI Plugin installed. It is always recommended to the user to install the appropriate version of the plugin if the version of the plugin doesn’t match the version of the Zoom Meeting client installed on the VDI machine.
The dialog is displayed by default, but if you want to disable the display of this dialog in the future, you can add a registry setting to do so. A value of 0 will disable the display of this dialog, regardless of the fact that the registry string indicates that the setting enables this dialog.
Key: SOFTWARE\Policies\Zoom\Zoom Meetings\VDI
Value: EnableDifferentVersionTip
Value Type: DWORD
Value Description: When a VDI client and a VDI plugin are not compatible with the same version, this will display an error message to tell you what should be done. Using an invalid version will result in no warning message being displayed, whereas using a valid version will result in a warning message being displayed.
Meeting behavior if a VDI plugin has not been installed
Admins can determine whether or not a user is allowed to join meetings if they haven’t installed a VDI plugin on their computer, or if participants are restricted from participating in meetings if they haven’t installed a VDI plugin. “FallbackMode” refers to this behavior, and there are a number of values that can be assigned to the registry settings in order to make that behavior occur.
Key: SOFTWARE\Policies\Zoom\Zoom Meetings\VDI
Value: FallbackMode
Value Type: DWORD
Value Description: There is a number assigned to each mode, which is as follows:
(1) Normal mode (This client behaves as if it were a regular Zoom client)
(2) Runs as a screen share meeting (The default setting for audio and video is to muffle them)
(3) As soon as the user attempts to join the meeting, a pop-up will appear that will say the meeting can’t be joined
(4) An error message will be displayed as part of a dialogue prompt. It is important to note that when the user closes the Zoom prompt, it will also close the Zoom app as well.
(5) Video is disabled.
(6) There is no video or sharing functionality available.
(7) There is no video or computer audio available
Comments: In the case of a registry setting that is not configured, one mode will be selected by default(1).
Configuring a minimum VDI plugin version required to join a meeting
An administrator can prevent the use of older VDI Plugin versions to join meetings by disabling the ability to use this plugin. If you want, you can configure a registry entry that checks for a minimum version of the plugin to be installed. VDI plugins that are less than the minimum version are not used, the connection status will not be displayed in the Statistics dialog, and the configured FallbackMode value will be applied when joining meetings when they are not used (in the absence of a FallbackMode configuration, the default mode will allow the user to join meetings with all functionality enabled, but audio and video will not be offloaded).
Key: SOFTWARE\Policies\Zoom\Zoom Meetings\VDI
Value: MinPluginVersion
Value Type: String Value (REG_SZ)
Value Description: 2.1.5 ~ current
Comments: If your deployment requires a minimum plugin version, configure the version to match that requirement.
Configuring a custom dialog message when VDI plugins are missing or incompatible
The end user can be presented with a custom dialog if any of the requirements of the VDI plugin are not met. If the VDI Plugin is missing, the version of the VDI Zoom Meeting client is less than the configured value, or if the version of the VDI Zoom Meeting client is greater than the version of the VDI Plugin, the dialog will appear. It should be noted that this dialog is only displayed if the FallbackMode value in the registry has been set to 1 or 2, 5, 6 or 7, as shown in the registry overview below.
Key: SOFTWARE\Policies\Zoom\Zoom Meetings\VDI
Value: FallbackModeTipMsg
Value Type: String Value (REG_SZ)
Value Description: A message will be displayed when an administrator has defined the fallback mode as 1, 2, 5, 6 or 7 and the VDI plugin is not working. A dialog message will not be displayed if this registry key does not exist or if the string value is empty.
Comments: There is no support for a line return in the registry table string type. When the user wants to make a line return, he or she should use the “/n” character to indicate a line return. The content string should not exceed 1024 characters in length, otherwise the vdi client may not be able to read the settings if the string is too long.
By using the example above, you will be prevented from having the dialog appear if the VDI plugin version does not exactly match the VDI client version. In order for the plugin to be considered compatible, the version of the plugin must be at least 5.7.6. If the VDI plugin does not meet those requirements (or its version is greater than that of the client), the end user will be displayed with a custom message. As a result, FallbackMode has been configured in such a way that if the user’s audio or video is not optimized, they will still be able to fully participate in the meeting.
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